Part 3
The quotation marks: sha ... sho
sha and sho are a complementizer pair for exact grammatical Phi wording. The opener begins the quoted material; the closer returns the listener to the surrounding clause.
ne thinoe sha no wei muila thinoe loa. no wei muila phialu loa. muila theula howela sho to haolu.
NAME thinoe QUOT.COMP IMP DAT earth seed give. IMP DAT earth water give. earth UNIV receive QUOT.COMP.CLOSE PST speak.
The quotation contains three complete utterances. Their directives and pronouns belong to thinoe's words; on the page, periods divide those utterances. After sho, to haolu gives the tense and predicate of the surrounding report.
01The closer is required
The frame must show where the quoted words end before the matrix predicate begins. sho supplies that boundary even when the final quoted predicate and the reporting predicate would otherwise meet. Pauses cannot replace it.
The predicate after the closer names the speech event or its reception. haolu speaks, shemui utters, thilou inquires, and hea hears. The appropriate choice depends on what the matrix subject did:
mia sha wa thia towe nai sho to hea.
1SG QUOT.COMP Q 2SG well be QUOT.COMP.CLOSE PST hear.
02Exactness belongs inside the frame
The quote preserves the original Phi wording: tense, evidentiality, clause force, and reference from the quoted speaker's point of view. The reporter's source for the speech event belongs in the matrix clause when it matters. sha ... sho does not certify that the quoted claim is true; it says which words are being presented as exact.
The exactness claim reaches grammatical Phi only. Wording in another language, a source script, or a form whose notation matters stays outside the Phi passage. A Phi translation can be quoted as Phi if those were the Phi words actually spoken, but the frame cannot make it verbatim with the foreign source.
03Reported content uses another pair
When the proposition matters more than the original wording, tha ... tho frames reported content:
shia tha thia so kamo tho haolu.
3SG DECL.COMP 2SG FUT arrive DECL.COMP.CLOSE speak.
The report may adjust pronouns or condense the wording because it makes no verbatim claim. Phi marks that difference lexically, so a listener can hear it as well as a reader can see it. The complementizers pamphlet gives both frames their full workout.
04The other jobs of the marks
English quotation marks moonlight. Around a title, they signal a name: Phi already has the spoken word for that job, and ne announces a work's designation exactly as it announces a person's. Around a single word, they hold the word at arm's length, the scare quotes of doubt or borrowed vocabulary. Phi holds a word at arm's length by saying whose it is: quote it exactly, sha welao sho, with the speaker named in the matrix clause, or mark the whole claim as carried by report with ti. Either way the distance is audible and attributed. Irony that refuses to name its source has no silent mark to hide behind, which is not an accident of the design.
Practicefind the frame
Read the thinoe example and locate four things: the matrix subject, the sha ... sho boundaries, the three quoted utterances, and the matrix predicate. Then frame one short Phi sentence whose wording you can verify, perhaps something you just said yourself. Choose the matrix predicate according to whether the subject spoke, inquired, or heard those words.
Finally, report the same proposition with tha ... tho. Note any pronoun or tense change required by the new point of view rather than changing it merely to make the two versions look different.